David was moved by this refreshing simplicity. He felt a little embarrassment in explaining that headquarters to him meant Samooborona, not Bund. The youth's countenance changed completely.
'Defend the Jews!' he cried contemptuously. 'What have we to do with the Jewish bourgeoisie?'
'The Bund is exclusively Jewish, is it not?'
'Merely because we found the rest of the Revolutionary body too clumsy for words. It was always getting caught, its printing-presses exhumed, its leaders buried. So we split off, the better to help our fellow-working-men. But we are a Labour party, not a Jewish party. We have the whole Russian Revolution on our shoulders; how can we throw away our lives for the capitalists of the Milovka Ghetto? Then there are the elections at hand—I have to work for the Left. Ah, here come some of our bourgeois; ask them, if you like. I will keep my father-in-law out of the shop.'
Two men in close confabulation strolled in, a third disconnected, but on their heels. With five Jews the concourse soon became a congress.
One of the couple turned out to be a Progressive Pole. He mistook David for a Zionist, and denounced him for a foreigner.
'We of the P.P.P.,' he said, 'will peacefully acquire equal rights with our fellow-Poles—nay, we shall be allowed to become Poles ourselves. But you Zionists are less citizens than strangers, and if you were logical, you would all——'
'Where's your own logic?' interrupted the disconnected man. 'Why don't you join the P.P.N. at once?'
The Progressive Pole frowned. 'The Nationalists! They are anti-Semites. I'd as soon join the League of True Russian Men.'
'And do you trust the P.P.P.?' his companion asked him. 'I tell you, Nathan, that only in the Progressive Democratic Party, with its belief in the equality of all nationalities——'